Bits and pieces of my life. I am a lifelong Christian. I have been married for over 39 years to Stan. No children. We have 3 Italian Greyhounds: Persephone, Dresden & Capodimonte and a calico cat named Binky. We have 9 nieces/nephews and 9 grandnieces/nephews whom we love. My hobbies are genealogy, reading, digital scrapbooking, history, dogs, homemaking. This is a personal blog and not a business. I share what interests me and I am not selling anything or making a profit.

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Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Underground Houses

My parents toyed with the idea of building an underground house back during the 1970's. They never followed through with it but it always interested me. I did a Google search on "underground houses" and "underground homes" and found some interesting photos. Some are built like caves, some look like hobbit homes, some are just plain tacky. I'm not interested in playing Fred and Wilma with a cave house. I don't like the "I'm stuck in the horse pasture" look either. I'm not a big fan of homes that look unprofessional or like they are made of playdo sculpted by a child's hands.

And, for me personally, I would hate to go back to living in a multi-story house with so many stairs. I like flat living. For all practical purposes I like to park the car, walk in the house and live without having to climb any stairs. I'm the one having to tote those laundry baskets, bags of groceries, vacuum cleaner, mop buckets, etc. So I don't want to make it harder on myself by having to go up and down stairs. I've done that and it got old.

Anyway, here are the best I could find.

I don't know if this one is real, but it's the best one.

Now here are some thoughts that came to me.* What about soil erosion? Some of these houses looked like they could have a problem with it.* Do you have problems with creepy, crawlies in the house (bugs, snakes, spiders) any more than a regular house?* Do you have problems with dampness and mildew like basements have?* Has anyone done a study to see how long these houses really last before deteriorating? Nature and time are hard on houses, is it more or less so with an underground house? Some looked a little worse for the wear in the photos I was seeing. I mean, how long can concrete last before it starts crumbling in places, cracking, seeping, etc.?

For now, I'm not ready to live in an underground house. I didn't see one that I was the least bit intrigued by.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I would like someday to own an underground home but the reason I stumbled on to your site is because of all of the tornadoes that just happened in Georgia and wondered... how come all of these people risk losing all of their possessions including their homes in a place where they are susceptible to such acts of nature? Why just not have an entire housing tack of underground homes? They would all be safe and lose nothing.

An interesting thought but there are some reasons why they don't all build underground. For Alabama, Georgia & NC they don't have enough tornadoes to warrant this drastic of a change in housing. I can't speak for the mid-west and plains states. Another thought, when my parents were interested in building an underground house, banks wouldn't finance them and insurance companies wouldn't insure them. It was too unusual a technology at the time. Hopefully that has changed. It's an interesting architecture but not for everyone.